Taiwan Disqualified From The Hearthstone Global Games For Stream Sniping
It's not only Kripparrian that gets stream sniped! Taiwan was caught using a tournament broadcast to help them make decisions in their recent matches against Singapore. Due to the disqualification, Singapore will now be advancing to BlizzCon instead of Taiwan.
Quote from BlizzardThe Chinese Taipei Hearthstone Global Games (HGG) team has been disqualified from the Hearthstone Global Games competition.
Following the Chinese Taipei vs. Singapore match, the Chinese Taipei team uploaded a video of their gameplay. Upon review of the video, and after reviewing in-person statements from the players, the Hearthstone Esports team has determined that members of the Chinese Taipei team used the delayed tournament broadcast to aid them in a decision during the game. This behavior is prohibited in our tournament rules under section 7.11a. Specifically, players are prohibited from “[s]tream sniping, or any general attempt by a player to spectate his or her own match or get information from another person spectating the match.”
Based on the timing of this disqualification, the Singapore HGG team will advance in place of the Chinese Taipei team to the playoff stage of the Hearthstone Global Games at BlizzCon.
I don't see how this is cheating if it's a publicly broadcast game it's no different to a football team reviewing the opponents game play and making plans/decisions around it??
On ladder you can argue that the player doing the streaming is knowingly taking a risk by voluntarily publishing their game state (especially if it is not delayed): some consider it unsportsmanlike while others consider it taking an opportunity offered by the opponent. But in this tournament the rules explicitly state that accessing information from matches in progress is forbidden, so that makes it cheating by the tournament rules.
Fair enough I suppose but it's really the tournament organisers' fault for allowing a situation like this to occur.
Some Hearthstone games can last a long time, so you'd have to delay by about an hour to make sniping a non-issue. Then the problem becomes that some players may start tweeting about the results or talk about it on their own streams and viewers will not be as interested in watching the broadcast "live" if they already know how it ends. It's the same reason why players stream without a delay: they value attracting viewers higher than denying their opponent the ability to snipe.
Its in the rules. Theres really no discussion to be had here.
What do they do in online poker tournaments?
Come over to my house. Let's play poker for money. The rules are that you can't look at the others hand or use any means to spy on your opponents cards. Don't mind my friend sitting behind you signaling me. You held your hand where he could watch and signal me. Doesn't matter that we agreed to the rules beforehand does it?
Tell me that sniping is ok, I won't agree to play in a streamed event.
Football teams are prohibited from viewing live broadcasts of their game. Any attempts to due so is a massive fine.
It's the people who stream sniped that are at fault, how can you see it any other way?
Poor Kripp.
So are the cheating players going to get penalised, or is being kicked out of HGG enough? This sounds like pretty serious cheating - I think it would be reasonable to give the cheating players HCT bans or some other punishment. There is no way they should receive HGG cheers, in my opinion.
well they already lost some prize money...
In any other game, such blatant cheating would pick up a LONG ban.
Using publicly available information is different to using deliberate hacks or other cheats which would normally receive long bans.
Someone left the cookie jar open and they took a small nibble..
I agreed, their cheers should be evenly distributed to all of the other teams. Tom60229 and his teammates are a disgrace.
Hi mom !!
Banned because cheating against the most corrupted country in the world, that is some next level thing OMEGALUL
Don't blame esport players from that country for politicians' misdoings...
Esports LUL
I'm confused by your statement, corruption in Singapore? Have you been there? Maybe I'm missing something, but when I visited it, I didn't get a hint of any corruption and it is one of the safest/wealthiest places in Asia, both of which have reverse correlation with corruption.